So, what don't you like about Christians?

Pashley,
Thought you might find the following somewhat interesting.

Did Paul Practice What We’re Told He Preached?
by By Alvera Mickelson

People who know very little about the Bible all seem to have heard that Paul is "against women" and teaches that they should be subservient to men and that they should not be in leadership position where men are involved.

And people who are Christians seem to know best three verses from Paul, "I permit no women to teach or have authority over a man"; (I Tim. 2:12) "Wives, be subject to your husbands as to the Lord," (Eph. 5:22) and "Women should be silent in the churches." (I Cor. 14:34).

If we believe the Bible is God’s Word (which I do) then we deep the commands that are in the Bible, don’t we? Of course we do–providing we understand what those commands are really trying to say. And then the problem becomes a good deal more complicated.

One of the most serious problems of Christians (and we are all guilty of this) is selective literalism. We choose which passages we want to apply literally; we shout those and we ignore all the others that we don’t like. Well, if that is bad, wouldn’t it be better if we just applied all of them literally? That would be almost impossible. For example, I’m sure that every person reading this is now disobeying at least one biblical command. "You shall not put on a garment made of two kinds of materials." (Lev. 19:19). So if you are wearing a cotton polyester blend or any other kind of blend, you are disobeying a biblical command!

Well, you may be saying, that’s an obscure Old Testament command. And you are right. There are lots of others like that. So let’s look at a New Testament command. Five times, Paul and Peter tell Christians to "Greet one another with holy kiss." I’ve never seen that practiced in the churches I attend. And I could give you quite a list of other similar New Testament commands that we do not follow.

Why not? You know the answer. Those things are cultural customs and different cultures have different customs. In fact, almost everything in the Bible is culturally conditioned—just as almost everything we do is culturally conditioned.

The clothes we wear; our hair style; the kind of house we live in; the books we read; everything in our lives is deeply affected by the culture in which we live. It cannot be otherwise. The same was true in Bible times.

Then what good does it do to study the Bible? The main purpose , of course, is that we meet God there. We see what God is like primarily because we see Jesus Christ—God incarnated revealed in human form. And we can see the principles of life that God has revealed in spite of the different cultures. People in Bible times, like us, worked for a living, they loved and hated; they had governments and leaders that were sometimes much worse than ours! They had families—husbands and wives, and children and parents. They had the important relationships just as we do. And their major problem—like ours—was hoe to get along in those relationships—with God, in families, in Churches, in communities. So we study the Bible to see what it can teach us about these crucial matters that are so important to all of us.

Before we look at some of the oft-quoted teaching of Paul, let’s look a bit at Paul himself. He was undoubtedly the greatest evangelist in New Testament times. Without his passion for the Gospel, the New Testament church might not have gotten very far. He met Christ miraculously on the road to Damascus where he was going to persecute Christians and put them in jail. After his conversion, he met some of the disciples—Peter and some of the others. They no doubt told him a lot about Jesus—his life, his teachings, his death, and resurrection. Remember that for the first twenty years or so after the death and resurrection of Christ, there was no written Gospel; the words, acts, life of Jesus were passed on orally from one to another. Then, according to Paul’s letter to the Galatians, he spent several years in the Arabian desert—no doubt trying to work through all that he had learned about Jesus, and all that he knew about the Old Testament through his training as a Pharisee. He had to try to distinguish between what the Old Testament said, (nothing about women being subject to men, or keeping silent in worship) and the traditions taht had been passed down in Judaism. He needed time to pray and study before he became the great emissary of Christ to the world.

Now Paul in his training as a Pharisee had been taught to have little or nothing to do with women. But he had had years to think through all of that with the things he had heard about Jesus and Jesus’ treatment of women. He had learned that in Christ there is neither Jew nor Gentile, male nor female, slave or free—we are all one in Christ. And, as we will see, Paul had been truly converted to Jesus . He would never do anything different from, what Jesus did and taught.

So let’s look at some of the things Paul did.

In Acts 16, we have the story of the beginning of the church in Philippi. Paul had been directed there by a vision of God. He usually began his evangelizing in the synagogue where he could reach the Jews. But there was no synagogue in Philippi. (To have a synagogue you had to have 10 Jewish men--women and children did not count.) Paul had heard that there was a prayer meeting along the river on the Sabbath so he went there. Se found a group of women praying—apparently no men. So he began telling them about Jesus, and one woman Lydia, opened her heart to God and so did other members of her household. She was a wealthy woman with a large house, and she invited Paul and his companions to stay at her home. He accepted, and her home apparently became the first "house church" in Europe. She was no doubt the "leader" of this young church. So far as the account goes, there were no men in the beginning.

I have been struck by the fact that in our "enlightened" day, we probably would not dream of starting a church with a bunch of women! We would say, "You have to have some men to start a church." Apparently Paul did not think so. Actually, this Philippian church begun with women (the church later attracted men, too) became Paul’s very favorite church! His letter to the Philippians shows his great joy in that church. He said it was the only church that regularly supported him, and the only church from which he accepted monetary gifts. In the 4th chapter of Philippians, he names two women of the church as his co-workers who "struggled beside me in the work of the gospel." Does this sound as though he told them always to be silent in church? Or that they must not proclaim or teach the gospel to men as well as women? If Paul really believed that as a universal principle, he surely would have included it in his letter to this church—that had been begun with women!

Paul was not the only one who recognized women as leaders of house churches. The little letter of II John is addressed to "the elect lady and her children whom I love in the truth." It closes with "the children of your elect sister send you their greetings." Older commentaries said that the "elect lady" and the "elect sister" were churches—not individuals. But a common-sense reading of this letter points to churches led by women.

Now let’s look at Priscilla and Aquila—a married couple who were great evangelists and church planters. Paul met them first in Corinth and stayed with them because they, like Paul, were tent-makers. (Paul, like every good Jewish rabbi, had a trade by which to support himself.) When opposition became too strong for Paul in Corinth (he was attested for preaching the gospel) he left for Ephisus and asked Priscilla and Aquila to go with him. Paul stayed in Ephesus a while and then went on to Caesara, leaving Prisicilla and Aquila in charge of the believers in Ephesus. Then there came to Ephesus a devout Jewish Christian man named Apollos who had come from Alexandria, Egypt. He was a gifted and enthusiastic speaker, and Priscilla and Aquila were thrilled. But when they heard him speak, they recognized that there were parts of the gospel that he did not really understand, so they took him aside and taught him the way of God more accurately. Apollos went on his way and became a great power for God.

Priscilla and Aquila are mentioned and commended by Paul eight times in his letters—more often than anyone else except Timothy, and in all but two instances Priscilla’s name is mentioned first although that was contrary to the custom of that day (and ours!) It probably indicates that when Paul thought of them, he thought of her first, which may indicate that she was the stronger leader of the two. She was at very least Aquila’s equal. In Romans 16, when Paul is sending greeting to many people, Priscilla and Aquila lead the list and he says, "They worked with me in Christ Jesus, and risked their necks for my life, to whom, not only I give thanks but also all the churches of the Gentiles. Greet also the church in their house." Priscilla and Aquila were then back in Rome and on task starting churches wherever they went. They could hardly have done what they did if Priscilla was to be silent and not to teach all who came.

And then there is Phoebe, who is mentioned in Romans 16:1 as a "deacon" in the church of Cenchrea. It is usually assumed that she was the one who carried Paul’s letter to the Romans from Greece to Rome. It was a hazardous, difficult journey across the stormy Mediterranean by ship, and then up 100 miles from Puteoli to Rome by caravan and foot. This must have been a strong woman (both physically and spiritually) that Paul trusted to make this journey and carry this important letter. Except in a few recent translations, the word "deacon" in reference to Phoebe, is translated some other way ("servant") in KJV, "deaconess" in others, etc. However, Paul describes her with the same word that he uses to describe himself, Apollos, Tychicus, Epaphras, Timothy—where it is always translated "deacon." Whatever Phoebbe did in Cenchrea is must have been important, for Paul says she was a benefactor of many, including himself. It doesn’t sound like she was a silent women who never took leadership!

There are others. Lois and Eunice are listed in I Timothy as the Christian grandmother and mother of Timothy—Paul’s very favorite disciple. When there was a tough situation, Paul sent Timothy to handle it—even though Timothy was younger than most of the other leaders in the churches. Paul sent Timothy to the very difficult church of Ephesus when, near the end of Paul’s life, that church was having lots of troubles. In his second letter to Timothy, Paul writes, "Continue in what you have learned and firmly believe, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have known the sacred writings that are able to instruct you through faith in Christ Jesus,"

Who taught this strong young man in the faith "from childhood"? Obviously his Christian mother and grandmother. (Acts tells us that his father was a Greed and apparently not a believer—he is never mentioned again.)

There are other illustrations—ten women are mentioned in Paul’s greetings to the Christians in Romans 16. Paul had never been to Rome when he wrote that letter, but he had heard about these people and their word for God. He describes the women with the same terms as he greets the nineteen men.

Please notes also, that in the three letters where Paul talks about the "gifts" that God has given to the church for its edification, there is never any distinction between the gifts God gives women that those God gives men (Romans 12, I Cor. 12 Ephesians4). If Paul thought that some gifts were strictly for men and not women. Would he not have somehow arranged those lists so that was obvious?

So if Paul was not sexist in his activities, and I think it is obvious from all accounts that he was not, why did he write those few referenced that make him sound like a male chauvinist? Paul was a very wise man whose passion was to see the gospel go forward in all the known world. He was a Jew and a Roman citizen—most Christians were not.

In the Roman empire everyone (with the exception of Jews who got a special dispensation) was expected to acknowledge the emperor as a god. Most people in the time of the early church had many gods in addition to Caesar—and that was considered o.k. so long as they acknowledged Caesar. Paul knew the church could prosper better of it kept a relatively low profile—not drawing unnecessary attention to the Greek customs that the Christians did not observe and that would make them look like some sect of weirdos.

Most of Paul’s letters in the NT are originally written to churches that faced some particular problem and he was trying to help them work through it.

I Corinthians was clearly a letter written by Paul to a church that had a lot of troubles: a) divided loyalties—some said they followed Paul, some Peter, some Apollos, some Christ; b) Sexual immorality among members; c) people taking each other to court d) eating meat offered to idols; e) order in worship services, and others. We have a lot of the same problems.

Every culture has its own ideas of proper decorum in worship. And in the early church Paul had the added problem of trying to make it possible for Christian Jews and Christian Gentiles to worship together. Something like out problems of combining black and white churches.

Like us, those Christians had strong ideas of proper dress, hair style, worship style, etc. Add to that the cultural attitudes about differences between the way men and women should act in worship.

In I Corinthians 11, Paul tells men that they should pray and prophesy in church with their heads uncovered. Why, I frankly don’t know, but we recognize that even today it is not usually considered good manners for men to wear hats in church. He says women should have something on their heads when they pray and prophesy in church. Again, I don’t know why, but it probably had something to so with what was considered proper in that society. But please note that women were to pray and prophesy in church services, but they should follow the accepted good manners of that time. The 11th chapter has lots of references to cultural patterns that we do not understand.

Remember, Paul was trying to keep the early church from getting in trouble with the Roman government and the rest of the Gentiles and the Jews he was trying to reach. He wanted nothing to hinder the message of the gospel from going out.

It is in this same letter that the phrase "women should be silent in the church" appears. There are many possible explanations of that. But it is sufficient for me to know that Paul could not possible have meant that literally since he had just explained how women could and should pray and prophesy in public gatherings. In the same 14th chapter Paul explains how important the gift of prophecy is in evangelism and in teaching. We need to read all of this recognizing that Paul is speaking to a first century situation in a particular town.

Let’s look at the next well-known quote of Paul’s—the one most often given to "Prove" that women are not to be leaders (especially pastors) in a church. I Tim. 2:11, 12. "Let a women learn in silence with full submission. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man." A number of books and articles have been written on this passage recently with many viewpoints presented.

We need to be reminded that we dare not read anything in the Bible apart from its literary and cultural and historical context. The old live is true, "A text without its context is pretext."

Remember that Paul wrote this as a personal letter to Timothy, his loyal disciple who is trying to bring order to the difficult church in Ephesus. This is not written to the church (as the letter to Ephesians is.) It is an intimate letter in which Paul tries to help Timothy with some of the problems he knows he is having. The basic trust of the letter is false teaching that is rampant in the area. The first chapter talks at length about wrong doctrine, myths, endless geneaologies, and those who have shipwrecked the faith.

Ephesus was a very difficult city in which to work and preach. It was the center of the worship of the goddess Artemis—the fertility goddess of all Asia. The temple to Artemis in Ephesus was considered one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.

Actually, the emphasis in the passage seems to be on the importance of women learning. In that culture, women did not have the same educational opportunities as men. Realistically, it has only been in the last 100 years that women in United States began to get opportunities for higher education. So Paul’s statement that women should learn is very forward-looking for his time. And since this is followed immediately by the statement, "I am not permitting a women to teach or have authority over a man" it is possible that these uneducated women were taking a teaching role for which they were not prepared.

The reference to Adam being formed before Eve is hard to understand but it is possible that Paul was refuting one of the wild myths circulation in Ephesus—maybe by these very women who, Paul said, should learn before they teach.

Would Timothy think Paul was talking about all women of all time? Probably not. No doubt Timothy knew all about Priscilla and Aquila and the part they had played in teaching Apollos in this very town of Ephesus! In Paul’s last letter to Timothy before his death, Paul tells Timothy to greet Priscilla and Aquila. They are apparently back in Ephesus to give whatever help they can to Timothy.

That leaves one more often quoted passage—Ephesians 5:22 "Wives, submit yourselves to you husbands as to the Lord." That is pretty clear, isn’t it? Yes, except that it must be read with the preceding verse: "Submit to one another our of reverence for Christ." Submission is a part of the life of every believer—male and female.

The law and culture of that time was clearly that of patriarchy—men being in charge. This was written to that church in Ephesus, a powerful city. I think Paul is just telling wives to go along with the culture for the sake of Christ. But he turns it all over by telling husbands they also had to be submissive for the sake of Christ. And then he says that husbands are to be totally self-giving to their wives—to love then as Christ loved the church when he gave himself up for us all! What an assignment.

Let’s note, too, that Paul said he was really speaking of Christ and the church, and just using marriage as an example of the oneness that believers should have with each other and with Christ.

Actually, the only place where Paul talks exclusively about marriage is I Corinthians 7—and we rarely hear that discussed. In I Corinthians 7, Paul gives instructions to husbands and wives regarding sex, about keeping the marriage together, about winning unsaved spouses to the Lord, and some other things. He gives exactly the same instructions to husbands and to wives. They are both equally responsible in all these areas. This important chapter that is so rarely discussed has nothing about husbands being in charge and wives being secondary.

So did Paul practice what he actually preached? He surely did. But what we have been told he preached is often a misunderstanding caused by selective literalism and failure to read those selected verses in the light of the historical cultural situation of Paul’s time, and what Paul Himself did. I think Paul has gotten a bum rap, and I would like to see him restored to his place as a champion of all believers and their service for God. He was a true follower of Jesus, as all of us want to be.

I’m so glad that in Christ there is neither Jew nor Gentile, male or female, bond or free. We are all one in Christ. Let’s all try to live what we believe.

 

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Pat and others,

Just a little note to point out that this is NOT the garden of eden that we're living in here, ok? We're dealing with an extremely f'd up version of how things were supposed to be. And honey, that's just as much a man's fault as it is a woman's, if not more so. The point is that the Bible also says that men are supposed to love their wives as Christ loves the church. The Bible says that men are supposed to have some f'ing morals and values and care for women in a "holy" way. And I tell you what Pat...the day I see this happen, I'll crawl on my knees all the way from my house to yours just so I can kiss your ass, and I'll shut my mouth and not speak until I'm spoken to. Until then, I'm left to be f'd over by every immoral, lustful, lying, p.o.s. man I ever meet, and I'm going to deal with it the best way I know how. Fair?

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You may think I'm a nut, but I'm fastened to the strongest bolt in the universe.

 

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Ouch Lori, you've met some bad guys, I see. We aren't all bad, ok? I've met some gold-digging women too.

Yes, we are to honor women the way you described, I try to do that with my wife! I sure don't ask her to sit up and roll over (unless i'm feeling playful!

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), but she feels I should be the head of the household when it comes to making family decisions. I don't always like that, but I do it. I always ask for her input, and more than not we agree on the course of action. I don't just say "DO THIS" or anything like that.

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"Know Jesus, know peace; no Jesus, no peace."
-Patrick Ashley

 

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I find that the more and more I think
about the bible and its morals and laws,
the more ridiculous a lot of its sounds
to me.
I recently read an article in the newspaper
today stating how a group of christians
were becoming more and more worried about
the problem of adultery on the net.
I would like to comment on this.
Adultery is a thing that has always
been around and from what I know, it
will continue to be around for as long
as the human civilization exists.
I know for one thing that committing
such acts make you a sinner; which has
something to do with temptation and
the Devil and sort.
But if you narrow adultery down to a
basis, you would see that it is connected
greatly to sexual attraction which is
something connected to sexual reproduction
which is hence connected to the nature's
law of survival. Although adultery is
objectionable to the laws of our society,
people cannot help do such things.
All men look at women sexually; it
happen in many, many ways. Animals
do it, we do it: it's all part of the
basic instinct of survival.

 

Okay, Pat - in the first paragraph I copied above, you stated that sometimes you have to put aside your dreams and ambitions for the good of your family. Then, in the second paragraph you said that you feel the ideal situation is the man going off to work and the woman staying at home. You went on to say that your wife would also like it this way. But then you went on to admit that it isn't that way in your own family - apparently your wife makes too much money to quit working and stay home with the kids, so you've instead chosen to sacrifice your self-proclaimed ideals in order to keep your current level of household income? Or maybe she really wouldn't like it as much as you claim? Just trying to piece this story together here...

Well, like you and like most families these days, we needed two incomes in our family to keep the boat afloat, and live in a decent neighborhood, where our children were able to attend decent public schools. As long as I had to work anyway, I may as well work at something that is fulfilling - don't you think? I mean, would it make it any better if I worked at a low-paying job that I hated? What I am saying is, I don't think that setting aside all of one's dreams and ambitions is necessary, or even a good idea. Working at a career that you love (and one where you come home to your family every evening) is not the same thing as skydiving or mountain climbing in Tibet, or something. So where's the problem?

By the way, I certainly don't hate you, and my blood is far from boiling - where do you get these ideas about me? And I don't really consider myself a "feminist" - more of a "humanist", I guess you might say. I would truly like to see equality for all - is that so difficult to understand?

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www.indigenousrocks.com

 

<quote>I don't really consider myself a "feminist" - more of a "humanist"</quote>

I just wanted to sort of highlight this, because I think this is something that gets mixed up when we talk about this topic. I think this is a great way of putting it, by the way, and I agree with it whole-heartedly!

I'm not trying to say a woman SHOULDN'T take care of her husband and children, and I'm not saying a man SHOULDN'T take care of his wife and children. I don't think any of us are saying that. I'm just saying that the particular roles each person plays in the family should be something agreed upon by all members of that particular family, not some outside generalization everyone has to try to mold to.

If my husband made the kind of money that would allow me to be the stay-at-home wife, I think I would enjoy that kind of life - I love my husband, I love my home, and I would love to have that kind of time to spend tending to those things. But it goes both ways, too. If I made the kind of money that would allow my hubby to stay at home, I think he too would enjoy that kind of life. Heck, he's a much better housekeeper than I am, he's probably more qualified for the job than I am!! Why MUST it be the woman taking care of house & family while the man earns the buck? Why couldn't it go the other way? Are men incapable of doing laundry, changing diapers, and braiding little-girl hair? I don't think so!! Are women incapable of holding down high-paying jobs, working in giant corporations, and calculating the finances for the family? I don't think so!! I think it's different, from family to family, from individual to individual, and it's just plain sexist B.S. that dictates women must be the barefoot-and-pregnant-in-the-kitchen types and the men gotta be the get-up-and-go-to-work-day-after-day type. Not fair to either gender.

I think this society is really screwed up in it's gender role-types and stereotypes. Men who are afraid to care and feel and cry because somehow that reduces their "manhood". Women who are afraid to be tough or ask for what they need to be happy in life because it reduces their "femininity".

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C'mon folks, let's stop treating eachother quite so much as a set of tits or a set of balls and start treating eachother more like a feeling, needy human being, because that's what we ALL are, regardless of your genetalia.

Not to say there aren't differences between men and women, don't get me wrong. But we aren't THAT different, I don't think. Most of our ACTUAL differences (I believe) are in regards to sex, and even those are mostly fallacious stereotypes. And out of the 24 hours in your day, how many of those hours on average do you spend having sex? Less than an hour per day on average for most folks, I'd guess.

I got a wakeup call for some of you - some women think about sex as much as or even more than some men do. You say men look at women sexually? Yah, so? I look at men sexually all the time, what does that tell ya'? I'm always checking guys out. "Hmm, nice ass, good broad shoulders..wow, check out that mouth...uh-huh, he'd do" LOL! (Lori, you with me on this one?

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) Women are told this is a masculine trait, so we subdue it, or don't admit to it, or bury it and ignore it.

Or let's look at masturbation, here's a GREAT illustration about what I'm talking about. Aside from whether or not your faith or whatever tells you it's "sinful" or what have you, when is the last time you heard a woman brag about how much she masturbates? Yet on TV and in real life we hear all the time guys bragging about their constant weed-wacking, chicken-choking, monkey-slapping (666! LOL)...gosh, how many more euphamisms are there? Do guys masturbate more than women? Yeah, I suppose they do, but if you judged from people's comments and society in general, you'd guess that all men masturbate every 5 minutes or so, whereas all women have maybe tried it once and then given up on it, if they've ever tried it. I sincerely doubt that is the case. But if a woman was bragging about diddling Mrs. Conehead, you'd probably be think less of her than you would of a guy that you heard bragging about teasing the One-Eyed Trouser Mouse. Why? Because it's SOCIALLY accpeted that men beat off, and women don't. Why? Stereotypes. Not that this means I want to hear about more women masturbating, I'm just using this as an example. Just look at how many euphamisms there are for men masturbating as opposed to how many there are for women. I actually can't think of ANY for women, I had to make up the Mrs. Conehead one. (That's why it's not that funny. Sigh.)

 

Xeno,

What a load of crap. PU! That stinks.

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You may think I'm a nut, but I'm fastened to the strongest bolt in the universe.

 

Xeno, if you were married, and your wife met a guy online and had an affair with him, would that be cool with you? I think not.

Just because humans have a propensity to do something, doesn't mean it's right to do. I've wanted to murder my mother in law, but...

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"Know Jesus, know peace; no Jesus, no peace."
-Patrick Ashley

 

Pashley,

Even if it's natural?

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Actually, I think it would be pretty
stupid, more overly idiotic. Yeah,
I'd be mad. So what. I wasn't talking
abou that. (LOL) Of course I know people
are like that; I see it all the time.

[/QUOTE]
Just because humans have a propensity to do something, doesn't mean it's right to do. I've wanted to murder my mother in law, but...

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[/QUOTE]

Oh boo hoo, you gonna cry now cause you
can't. (LOL) sorry if I offended you,
I was just joking. Anyway, I was trying to prove a point in another area with what
I said above. And who hasn't had thoughts
about wanting to kill someone?